 Samantha “Sammi” Rawlings
‘07 and Joshua Magee ’07, two recent
graduates of the College
of Engineering, Technology, and
Architecture
(CETA), were awarded first prize in
the Best Student Paper Award
competition held at the recent 154th
Meeting of the Acoustical Society of
America conference in New Orleans. Their presentation was part of several sessions on architectural acoustics held throughout the conference by both professional researchers and students. They were selected by a subcommittee of ASA judges who anonymously attended each session and scored student participants based on the quality of both the content of the paper and its presentation. Rawlings and Magee presented the results of their undergraduate research project on the acoustic signatures of footfall noise. Their project involved designing, building, and utilizing 12 different floors as walking surfaces for male and female volunteers. Each participant wore shoes with hard, medium and soft soles, providing a wealth of previously unknown information regarding the particular sound power spectrum produced by each shoe/floor combination. The measurements were made in the Reverberation Room in CETA’s Acoustics Engineering Laboratory. The project was part of a research grant from the Paul S. Veneklasen Research Foundation, obtained by their advisor Bob Celmer ’78, professor of mechanical engineering. Rawlings graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering, majoring in Acoustics and Music, in May 2007. Originally from Rantoul, Ill., she is currently an acoustical engineer with Veneklasen Associates in Santa Monica, Calif. Magee graduated in May 2007, magna cum laude, with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering with an acoustics concentration. A native of Bridgewater, Mass., he is currently a staff engineer at The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company in Hartford. He will be attending graduate school this fall at The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va. |